Patients call medical offices to consult with doctors, fix appointments, or cancel appointments. Seamless interaction with patients to provide excellent care, build trust, and enhance your reputation depends on a medical receptionist's phone skills and a reliable phone system.
How can the best phone system for medical offices and healthcare help your business? Medical receptionists handle hundreds of inbound and outbound calls daily from patients for appointments, prescription refills, and emergencies. They also make calls to outside labs, doctors, referrals, etc., and also manage incoming patients.
Patients who call during an emergency want their call to be routed to the appropriate department without much wait time. Patients, suppliers, doctors, and labs need information quickly. Crackled calls, jitter, call drops, and phone lines being down can be detrimental to your medical office's reputation in the competitive healthcare market.
Provide the best in class service to your patients and enhance your reputation with Community Phone, the best phone system for healthcare facilities.
With Community Phone's calling features such as - automated answering service, call routing, live call transfer, 3-way calling, and more that suit the ever-changing needs of medical offices, your medical receptionists can distribute their bandwidth between calls and incoming patients efficiently and effectively.
Read on to learn more about Medical Office-specific features from Community Phone or talk to their business specialists now!
Features to Look For in Phone Systems for Medical Offices
Here are some of the features medical office phones should have:
Auto-Attendant - This voice-recorded telephone menu system ensures that all incoming calls are forwarded to the relevant department. This makes your phone system more efficient and ensures customer calls are answered or returned depending on the time and situation.
Call Recording and Analytics - Call recording provides qualitative data to ensure that your customers are receiving excellent service, whilst analytics helps you review things like ‘call resolution time’ to monitor trends over time.
Smart Call Routing - Routing calls to the right department or person is essential during an emergency or when patients call for assistance. Efficient call routing must ensure your medical office does not miss a single call from a patient, doctor, or anyone else.
Toll-Free Number - Toll-free numbers ensure that your customers can call for assistance, book appointments, or consult with doctors without incurring a charge for it.
Voicemail-to-text - There’s nothing worse than hundreds of voicemails you need to find time to listen to. This feature is an automated transcription service, allowing you to skim-read all of your voicemails and attend to the most urgent.
Community Phone: The Best Phone System For Small Medical Offices
Community Phone is the most reliable system for small medical offices and healthcare facilities in the U.S. The company uses FCC-approved cellular protocol to connect the phones in your facility to cell towers in your area, eliminating the need for an internet or copper wire connection. Strong coverage in rural areas, clear call quality, reliability, affordability, and customer-friendly service are characteristics of the Community Phone business landline service.
Exclusive Community Phone Features For Medical Offices
Here are some Community Phone features exclusive to Medical Offices and Healthcare
**Automated Answering Service
**
Greet your patients professionally with a custom greeting when you cannot take calls and route them to the correct department or extension.
The answering service accompanying this feature can be programmed to route calls to people as the first option in an emergency, answer frequently asked questions, and route to voicemail when you are busy or during off-business hours.
Call Recording
Record incoming and outgoing calls to analyze areas of improvement in staff's ability to provide good customer service. You can use data from the call recordings to create training programs to ensure your staff can provide better service to your patients.
Call Routing
Route calls to your medical office's appropriate department or extension with Community Phone's call routing feature.
You can program the phones in your facility to ring simultaneously so the next available person can answer the call. Or, you could program the phones to ring concurrently to ensure a second line rings if the first one is busy.
If you have a set of people answering patient calls, you could even get an automatic call distributor to distribute calls to available representatives.
Voicemail-to-email
You don't need time to log into your voicemail box and listen to voicemails to assist your patients better. The Community Phone voicemail-to-email option enables you to check your voicemails in your mail as an audio file and respond immediately to emergencies.
Live Call Transfer
With this feature, anyone in your medical office can transfer calls to anyone else by pushing a button associated with the infinite number of extensions you can have in your transfer list. You can get the right extension almost every time without placing the caller on hold and playing irritating hold music.
Number Choice
Get a local number to build trust among your patients and to feel like a part of the local community.
A toll-free number can help patients call doctors, confirm appointments, check their prescriptions, etc., without incurring charges.
Buying a vanity number for your healthcare facility can help patients remember your number easily and call during an emergency or when they need assistance.
Quick Setup at Your Medical Office
Save time and money in installations with the Community Phone landline base. Anyone in your medical office can install the base in under 30 seconds to make and receive calls. The installation is a 2-step process:
1. Connect the landline base to the power outlet.
2. Connect the phone to the phone jack in the landline base and turn it on.
Once all the lights on the landline base turn green, your business is ready to make and receive calls.
How Does the Landline Base Work?
The Community Phone landline base connects to cell towers in your area, eliminating the need for an internet or copper wire connection. The built-in antennas on the landline base amplify signal strength to give you voice clarity and call quality in low-reception areas. Get strong coverage in rural areas, and 99% of the U.S as the company has partnered with nationwide carriers to ensure seamless connectivity.
Benefits of Choosing Community Phone
Safety and Security
****Since Community Phone is a landline and does not use the internet for communication like VoIP phones, you can be assured of the safety and security of patient information as there is no opportunity for breaches and hacks.
Unlimited Nationwide Calls
****Stay in touch with your patients, doctors, healthcare providers, and suppliers with Community Phone's unlimited minutes.
Keep Your Business Number
When switching services to Community Phone, you can keep your current phone number. The company has a quick and efficient porting process that allows you to port your number from your current provider without disruption to service.
Reliability
Connect with your patients without latency, jitter, call drops, and crackled calls. Enjoy features like call routing, live call transfers, and 3-way calling, and create a great impression among your customers.
24/7 Customer Support
Rest assured that Community Phone's reliable 24/7 customer support will answer any concerns or questions you may have regarding their product or service.
Works During Power Outages
The backup battery in the landline base keeps your phone running even during a blackout. This can reduce your facility's dependence on inverters, reducing utility bills.
Talk to Community Phone TODAY!
How Can I Get Started with Community Phone?
Sign Up With Community Phone
Signing up with Community Phone is easy. Firstly, decide if you want to use a combination of landline + cell, or go full cellular. If you want a landline system, you can contact their business specialists to get a custom quote and choose a subscription plan depending on how many lines you'd like within your medical office.
If you choose not to use a landline base, your subscription will be based on the data you will use. Community Phone's account managers will be happy to discuss custom requirements if you would like them to accommodate custom phone systems to suit your medical office's needs.
Once you've selected your package, the signup process will guide you through how to receive and set up the Community Phone equipment without any hassle.
Set Up Office Hours and Voicemail
Once you have signed up with Community Phone, contact your account manager to have the custom dial menu programmed to set up office hours and to route the calls to voicemail during off-business hours.
You can program the auto attendant menu to 9 levels and have the system answer frequently answered questions to free up your personnel for more critical and specialized tasks.
Configure Multiple Phone Extensions
You can program an infinite number of extensions with your Community Phone setup. Once your transfer list has been programmed, anyone in your facility can transfer the call to another person or an extension by pushing a button or dialing the extension number.
Ensure efficient patient care and support by transferring their call to the person most ideal to assist them and enhance your reputation in the healthcare industry.
Set Up Call and Business Features
Your Community Phone account manager and support will be happy to help you set up call and business features for your business to suit your specific needs.
Talk to Community Phone's business specialists to know more!
Make the System Live
Once all the features are set up in the backend, you only have to install your landline base to activate your connection. Once you receive the landline base, follow the instructions, insert the battery, fix the antennas, connect it to a power outlet, plug your phone in, and you are all set to make and receive calls.
You can contact their 24/7 customer support if you have challenges in setting up your landline base.
FAQs
Who handles most routine patient telephone calls?
An assistant or other medical office staff will handle most routine calls from patients. An effective medical practice phone system will allow them to transfer the calls to the relevant department.
How many times should a phone ring in a medical office?
Research has shown that patients expect calls to be answered within three rings. If the phone isn't answered in three rings, then the automated assistant should be activated to support the caller.
What accounts for the majority of telephone calls in a medical office?
Patients make the majority of telephone calls to a medical office. It is essential that the phone systems are designed to provide the best service possible and deal with their queries in the most efficient manner.
Conclusion - The Bottom Line
If you're looking for a medical practice phone system, look no further than Community Phone. With internet-free unlimited nationwide calling, several calling features, and a super easy setup, you'll be able to deliver a much richer service to your patients and meet their needs much more efficiently!